Sometimes when you pass away, you want to be buried with an item that you hold dear to your heart. Well, for Tina Watson, her final wish was to be buried in a coffin that looks like a giant box of tea bags. She was 73 years old and would drink as much as 40 cups of tea a day! She would ask her daughter, Debs Donovan, to ensure that this unusual request was fulfilled when she passed away.
“It’s typical of Mum,” Debs of Leicestershire says of her mother’s request. “She had a wicked sense of humour and drank about 30 or 40 cups of tea a day, every day. She just loved having a cuppa.”
Tina’s request for burial in a coffin that resembles a giant tea bag box… Typical Tina Humor!
Debs remembers her mother constantly having a smile on her face, even though she battled cancer twice and had both legs amputated. Debs recalls, “We got chatting about her coffin after the funeral of my stepdad Peter four years ago. She just blurted out, ‘I want to be buried in a coffin that looks like a giant box of tea bags.’”
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She continues, “I burst out laughing and said, ‘Okay, but it’s got to be Typhoo because you only get an “oo” with Typhoo’. Mum cracked up at that and we just fell about laughing. She said she was deadly serious about the coffin so that was that.”
What her coffin would look like
The funeral service for Tina was held on Friday, November 1st, at Gilroes Crematorium in Leicester. As requested by the woman herself, Tina was brought into the service by way of a giant tea bag box. Debs would talk about her mom’s best moments, including that she never let her ill health get in the way of her humor.
Debs says, “She lost one leg after the bite got infected after being bitten by an insect in Spain 14 years ago. Mum then lost the other leg when the infection spread further. She never let anything get her down. She always saw the funny side of things even when there wasn’t a funny side.”
Raise a cup of tea to Tina
Funeral director Paul Pender also had a few words for the deceased mother. “It was one of our more unusual requests but we were happy to be able to make it happen. I got in touch with the guy that helps us with customized coffins and he produced the goods,” he says.
He continues, “It is always nice when the customer gets what the customer wants.” Debs follows up with, “I just know mum would be looking down and laughing like a drain at her coffin. I’ll go home later and put the kettle on and raise a cup to Mum.”
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